It's a sin so egregious that Christians weren't allowed to do it, BY LAW, for centuries! But now? Totally fine. Everybody participates. No big deal at all! The next time you meet a Bible literalist who is certain that you have to follow the laws of the Bible to the letter, but who is also pretty excited about capitalism, ask them about usury, and watch them fall all over themselves to pretend like it's fine. Because MAN, the Bible is just adamant that people shouldn't do that. Like, death penalt...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Anybody want to take a long walk in the desert? Well, this week we've brought in Angela Roskop Erisman to guide us through the wilderness! In her new book, The Wilderness Narratives: Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation, Dr Erisman discusses the exodus as you may not have heard it discussed before. Far from being the actual writings of a literal Moses, Dr Erisman uses genre analysis to propose a far more allegorical explanation for the story. Could it be that the beloved tale of Israe...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 105
This week, we don't want to make it bad, so we're going to take a sad song and make it better. The book of Jude may only be one chapter, but it's jam-packed with stuff for this show to talk about. Who wrote it, and when? Who was it written to? What grumblers is it mad about? We'll attempt to answer all these questions and more. Then, speaking of grumblers, we have some of our own to deal with! Whenever Dr. Dan says that the Bible is not a monotheistic book, people come out of the woodwork with s...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This week we welcome "deep skeptic" pastor Jeremy Steele to the show. Jeremy has spent recent years building an online congregation of people who don't feel seen or understood by the traditional church. He's here to tell us about life as a pastor, how he gathered his flock, and why people who are deconstructing the theologies they were raised with might still need a community like his. You can find Jeremy on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@skeptic.pastor Or find links to his book How Not to...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the big fight! In the red corner: personal finance guru and guy who makes millions by making poorer people feel bad about their debt, Dave "how's your retirement fund looking?" Ramsey. And in the blue corner: with a much lighter pocketbook but much heavier t-shirt collection, Dan "alright let's see it" McClellan. What could a Bible scholarship show possibly have to say about a personal finance guy, you might ask. Well, Mr. Ramsey styles himself a Christian person...
Mar 17, 2025•58 min
Christians have had a missionary zeal since the beginning. From the dawn of Christianity, the mandate to share the "good news" has been a central theme of Christian life. But what is a Christian to do when it is clear that the audience they want to share the gospel with would react poorly to much of what's in the Bible? Well, at least in one case, the solution was just redact the heck out of it. On this week's show, we're talking about "The Slave Bible," a heavily truncated version of the good b...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Come celebrate round numbers with us as we embark on our 100th episode of Data Over Dogma! And what, you might ask, are we doing to mark this grand event? Have we carefully crafted a clips show looking back on the best moments of the last 100 weeks? Have we mindfully chosen topics that relate to the number 100? Well, no. No we haven't. It's just a regular show. Sorry. That said, it's an interesting one! First, we're covering a very interesting letter Paul sent to his buddy Philemon. Aside from r...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 2 min
If you think you had it rough living in your sibling's shadow, just imagine how James, the brother of Jesus must've felt! Well, today James gets his due. We'll discuss who he was, what he did, and what it might mean theologically, that Jesus wasn't an only child. Then, if you listened to this show for more than a few episodes, you're likely to have heard Dan McClellan mention "the Masoretic text". Well... what the heck is that? Never fear! We're going to get you all up to speed on one of the mos...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Jesus went to hell! Briefly. He gave the place a look-see after he died, and then left to go be resurrected. Or at least that's the claim that some theologies make. Where did the idea that Jesus visited hell come from? Is it Biblical? I mean, it would have to be, wouldn't it? People wouldn't just make up something like that long after the Bible had been written just because, right? Right? And speaking of hell, not every part of the Bible treats that place the same. In our second segment, we'll t...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Would you be mine, could you be mine, won't you be my neighbor? If you know that song, then you know that at least one person understood Jesus' answer to the lawyer. Far fewer seem to now. But that's in the second half of our show! First, we're exploring some imaginative pretending that would almost be cute if so many people hadn't taken it seriously. It's the amazing amateur (read: fake) archeology of Ron Wyatt. We've encountered Wyatt's work on the show before, because the man was prolific. Th...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min
This week we're talking government on the Data Over Dogma show, and woof! It's a doozy! First, we're going into the belly of the beast and talking to and actual, honest-to-goodness United States congressperson. Eric Swalwell has a D next to his name, which, if you ask some in our country, means he's a godless communist. In fact, he's a professed Christian who is nevertheless concerned about the dangerous rise of Christian Nationalism here. He's come on the show to talk about secularism in govern...
Feb 03, 2025•58 min
"Hey- it sure is raining a lot, do you have a boat?" "No, but I *Noah* guy." That's right, on this week's episode of Data Over Dogma, we're going diluvian all up in here. It's the story of Noah and the great... vinyard? Here's the twist: It seems that the account of Noah we get in our version of Genesis may not be exactly what we were told it was! Then, call Richard Wagner, because we're talking about the power of a strong horns section. It's Joshua's time to shine as he leads the Israelites int...
Jan 27, 2025•58 min
Sometimes on this show, big ten-dollar words show up like apotropaic or etiology or deuterocanonical, where, unless you're pretty well-versed in this stuff, you may not know what we're talking about (ok fine- you may not know what Dan M is talking about). This week we're tackling two ten-dollar concepts in one show, so buckle in and bust out twenty bucks! First, we're diving into Gnosticism. We've glanced off this topic several times, but never stopped to talk about what it is. Who were the Gnos...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Better get a lawyer, because Data Over Dogma is getting all kinds of legalistic! There are many who claim that all modern law has a direct lineage back to biblical law. This week, we're going to show several reasons why that probably isn't the case, not the least of which being that biblical law... it's really bad. We'll start by talking about the covenant code. This is the set of laws laid out in Exodus that were meant to govern how the ancient Hebrew people interacted with each other (it's all...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Genesis has no shortage of confusing, misleading, and bizarre stories, but this week we're tackling two separate stories that share a particularly ugly history. First, we tell a story in third person. Or rather, a story about the third person. It's Adam and Eve's firstborn, Cain, who killed his brother and was cursed by God. But God also gave him a mark of protection- something on his person that everyone could see, and would ensure nobody would hurt him. But what was that mark, and could the id...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 3 min
When you hear the phrase "Christian Nationalism," what do you think of? A harmful set of ideologies that threaten democracy? A buzzword phrase used by bad people to demonize good Christians? April Ajoy has had a journey of conscience from being a full-throated Christian Nationalist to someone fighting against the damage she now sees in that set of dogmas. The real trick of it was that at the time, she didn't know that phrase, or why it would have applied to her. She just thought she was being a ...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Did NASA confirm the date of the birth of Christ? Are most translations of the Bible wrong about the order of the creation? Will Dan M ever be able to say the word smorgasbord? This week on the Data Over Dogma show, we're honoring the Bible by shredding some bad apologetics! As we say every week on the show, one of our goals is to combat misinformation. Sometimes that means that we combat bad attempts to refute the Bible, and sometimes that means we go up against bad attempts to make the Bible s...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Does the Bible really say that parents should beat their children? Yes. Yes it does. AH! But couldn't that verse in Proverbs mean something else? Something a little less abuse-y? Something about a shepherd guiding their sheep? On this week's episode, we'll look at what the author of Proverbs REALLY meant when they said that a parent who spares the rod hates their child. Then, what is Satan's job? Is it to enact the eternal torment of sinners? Or is it possible that Satan's lake of fire has a far...
Dec 16, 2024•57 min
When you think cults, chances are you're imagining a documentary series you streamed recently where a shockingly non-dynamic person has somehow managed to convince a group of reasonably intelligent followers that they are the smartest person in the world, and now controls their lives in terrifying ways. So when we talk about "cult centralization," you could be forgiven for not immediately understanding what we're talking about. But stick with us: this one gets really interesting! On this week's ...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr
Haul out the holly, 'cause it's Christmas time! And what could be more appropriate for Christmas than to recount the nativity story? Or is it stories? That's right, this week we're looking at the Bible's two competing narratives of the birth of Jesus and asking "hey- what gives?" Because when you read the account in Matthew and the account in Luke, you can't help but notice that they have almost nothing to do with each other. Like... they're two totally different and unrelated tales. How is that...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Ooooh! It's de-bunking time! But with a twist: this time we're debunking the debunkers! That’s right, we’re coming after an idea that certain nonbelievers love to throw at Christians to put them in their place. Well, you can stay safely out of place, Christians, because it's the nonbelievers' turn to eat some humble pie. This week's show, we're looking at the theory that Jesus was just one figure in history among many others that share exactly the same story. This idea purports to show that the ...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 8 min
The battle has begun! For a long time, scholars have said that Jesus nullified all the former Jewish laws about which foods were okay to eat and which were impure, and therefore not fit for consumption. The main passage that they used to justify this idea comes from Mark 7. Well this week our guest is going to blow your mind. Hint: your stomach might be more powerful than you knew! Logan Williams has just written a paper [you can find it here] that could totally change how scholars view this pas...
Nov 18, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 85
DEMONS! We're at an interesting crossroads in history. As science is able to explain more and more about how the universe works, and more specifically how we humans work, we find ourselves using supernatural explanations less and less. When, for example, we understand the erratic behavior of a friend as being part of their mental health journey, we're far less likely to turn to hurtful and dangerous religious tropes for our understanding. But that doesn't stop some people from continuing to turn...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Psalm 22 [according to the Deer of Dawn (don't worry- you'll get that joke later)] is not a happy ditty. It is the song of a hopeless singer, crying out to a God who doesn't seem to be there. Which seems like kind of a weird thing to include in a book of scripture about that God, but there you go. But this psalm is particularly famous, as it was quoted by a pretty famous guy, at a pretty famous moment. This week on Data Over Dogma, we're looking at the words Jesus chose to say just before he die...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 5 min
It's the boogeyman that haunts churches across the land: religious deconstruction. This is the process of genuinely questioning your religious faith, pulling apart what you've been taught (probably your whole life), sifting through it all, and deciding for yourself what actually works for you, without regard for what anyone else has to say about the matter. It can be a deeply disorienting--even terrifying--process, but more and more people are choosing this road. Well, we've got social media dar...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 3 min
As origin stories go, the Bible's explanation for why humanity has multiple languages is... let's call it creative. Alas, it doesn't hold up particularly well in a modern, scientifically informed era. That said, there's more to the story of the so-called "tower of Babel" than immediately meets the eye. We'll discuss what other ancient questions this chapter of Genesis is attempting to answer, and how it all fit into the context of its time. Then the linguistic adventure continues, as we delve in...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 6 min
The modern concept of God (at least in the Christian context) is of an all-knowing, all-powerful, being. One who is everywhere all at once. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake... all that stuff. But does that view of the almighty comport with what is represented in the Bible, or are those ideas more recent innovations? Where did these ideas come from? Then, we're talking Bible quotations. Or more accurately mis-quotations. Plenty of people misquote the Bible, it happens ...
Oct 14, 2024•58 min
Go to any comment section where someone has made a controversial claim about the Bible and you'll see it: someone gatekeeping the idea of who qualifies as a "true Christian". Real Christians believe in the trinity, or else decidedly DON'T believe in the trinity. Real Christians believe we're saved through works. Or through faith alone. Or neither. Or both... On this week's episode, Dr. David Congdon joins us to discuss his book Who is a True Christian. If you think that question is settled or re...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 9 min
This week Craig Mousin and Cecil Cicirello of the Lawful Assembly podcast join us to talk about one of the major hot-button issues in current world politics: immigration. Craig is not only a lawyer who specializes in immigration law, he's also an ordained minister, so we asked him on to bring his unique perspective to bear on the issue. We discuss the current state of things in the U.S., and ask what a Biblical approach might be. You can find Lawful Assembly wherever you get your podcasts, or at...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Regular listeners will know that Dr. Dan is not of fan of definitions. Dictionaries aren't rulebooks, he'll say, they're attempts to describe how words are being used. So when the Data Over Dogma show is all about what two words mean, you know it ain't going to be simple. The first word we're looking at is "religion". We'll cover the origin of the word, and really try to get a handle on what that conceptual category is trying to get at. Will we succeed? That's for you to decide. The next word, a...
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 10 min
